I did not expect this show to be this good. And I am glad I decided to watch it.
It started with a strange occurrence, three decades ago, when some people who weren’t even pregnant suddenly gave birth to special children, kind of like midichlorian Anakin Skywalker out these babies into the world.
An eccentric billionaire, Reginald Hargreeves decided to find these children and adopt them. He found seven of them, and raised these kids, training them to someday save the world.
Instead of giving them proper names, he numbered them according to their abilities. And kept his distance from the children, while letting his robot Grace “Mum” take care of them and give them the love they needed growing up.
Reginald made the children fight crimes and called them the Umbrella Academy, establishing his children as vigilantes who’d someday save the world. Of course, his parenting failed him. When the children were 13, Number 5 disappeared and never came back. Then later on, Number 6 died on a mission, and his death led the rest of the children apart and out of the Hargreeves mansion.
In the present, the children, now grown ups of 30, finally came home and got together again due to the news of Reginald’s death. They held a short and sad funeral, in which they couldn’t even say a nice thing or two about their father.
Number 1, Luther, was an astronaut with super strength who had been living on Moon for the past four years, doing some unknown mission from Reginald. His super stringy
Number 2, Diego, was doing his daredevil stunts. He couldn’t move on from his childhood years, fighting crimes, and decided to do it on his own.
Number 3, Alison, was a famous actress. Due to her ability to alter reality, she could make her way up to the top in career and everything easily.
Number 4, Klaus, was a junkie who refused to get clean due to his ability to communicate with the dead. The moment he was sober, the dead looked for him, so he tried to drown his sobriety away.
Number 5 was still missing, and had been missing for 17 years.
Number 6, Ben, had been deceased for awhile and there was only a statue of him in the mansion to remember him by. However, his ghost kept Klaus company.
Number 7, Vanya, was a violinist who was hated by the rest of her family due to a book she had written, exposing the Hargreeves to the world.
Along with them were Pogo, the family ape butler, and Mum.
Things started to get weird when suddenly, out of nowhere, Number Five came back, looking as if he had never left. However, he had been trapped in the future for 45 years, post apocalypse, and finally found his way back home.
And of course, Five came home just in time. The moment he checked the date he knew, that they only got eight days to save the world. And he had to figure out how before it was too late.
This show surprised me in many ways. I was invested in the characters, most importantly, Five and Klaus. I truly cared about them and wanted them to find happiness. And that’s good. It means the writers and actors did the characters so much justice that I could care that much.
The show was pretty predictable in some ways. Since the beginning, we were all given the hints that Vanya was told she had no powers and very ordinary for a reason, that which was that she had the most dangerous power and could potentially end the world. So when it was revealed that Vanya was the most powerful sibling, it was not a surprise.
It also showed how bad parenting could truly cost so much.
Now, one of the things that I wish could be different about the show was the violence. In a way, the blood and all punches make it awfully hard to get other people to watch this show with me. But apart from that, this show got a good storyline and it’s well acted.
Absolutely love the Umbrella Academy. 8/10. I cannot wait till season 2.
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